Vanderbilt University
From Tactical Insight to Structural Change
The Challenge
By 2023, Vanderbilt University’s School of Nursing—consistently ranked among the top nursing programs in the country—had invested meaningfully in Slate.
As an early adopter, Vanderbilt’s graduate Slate instance was more than a decade old and shared across seven other graduate schools. Over time, competing priorities and shared governance made it increasingly difficult for the School of Nursing to recruit effectively while delivering the level of applicant experience the program expected.
Recognizing these challenges, Vanderbilt partnered with Waybetter for a comprehensive Slate audit focused on the School of Nursing, seeking an objective, expert assessment of what was working, what wasn’t, and where the system was no longer meeting the team’s needs.
What began as a targeted audit quickly revealed broader structural constraints—ones that could not be fully addressed through optimization of the existing instance alone.
The Turning Point
Waybetter’s audit went well beyond surface-level configuration checks. Using a proprietary methodology spanning more than 500 data points, Waybetter evaluated Vanderbilt Nursing’s Slate instance across four dimensions: technical foundation, application structure, operational workflows, and student outreach.
The findings were clear, highlighting both immediate gaps and deeper system-level constraints, including:
- Structural limitations driven by legacy practices and shared-instance design, where processes and configurations built to serve multiple schools restricted the School of Nursing’s ability to customize, adapt, and operate independently
- Underleveraged personalization and automation, resulting in limited student-type and status-based messaging, minimal dynamic content, and student-facing portals that favored functionality over usability
At the core of these findings was a simple reality: the School of Nursing’s ability to recruit students and deliver a strong applicant experience was constrained by its position within a shared, aging Slate instance.
Immediately following the audit, Vanderbilt engaged Waybetter for a full-scale Slate implementation, breaking the School of Nursing into its own dedicated instance, and creating the flexibility, governance, and infrastructure required to deliver a truly student-centered experience at scale.
The Results
- Clear, data-backed insight: The audit clarified both the limits of the existing Slate instance and the path forward, prompting a full-scale Slate implementation with Waybetter to support Nursing in its own dedicated environment.
- Expanded engagement: In the year that followed, Vanderbilt Nursing partnered with Waybetter on more than a dozen initiatives spanning student outreach, student-facing experiences, and internal operations.
- Concrete execution: That work resulted in 5 automated communication flows, 8 student-facing portals, and a centralized internal faculty dashboard supporting clinical placements, coursework, and student communications.
- Continued momentum: In the years since, additional Vanderbilt graduate schools have sought to apply the same auditing methodology, reinforcing the audit as a standard the institution continues to return to.
Why Waybetter Audits Are Different
Most Slate audits stop at surface-level configuration checks. Waybetter’s audits are designed to answer a more important question: Is Slate actually working the way your enrollment strategy requires it to?
Our proprietary audit evaluates over 500 data points across technical foundation, application architecture, operational workflows, and student outreach. Each finding is scored using Waybetter’s proprietary rubric, giving institutions an objective view of performance and a clear path forward.
That clarity is what enables action. Sometimes that means optimization. Sometimes it means rebuilding. And sometimes, as Vanderbilt demonstrated, it means making a structural change with confidence.
One of the most remarkable aspects of Waybetter is the depth of their institutional knowledge.
Their team possesses insights and expertise that outshine those of other vendors I’ve encountered in the higher education CRM and marketing landscape. It’s evident that they invest time in understanding our unique challenges and tailoring their solutions accordingly."